NCERT Book Class 12 Geography (Fundamentals Of Human Geography) Chapter 5 Secondary Activities

All economic activities namely primary,
Unit-III secondary, tertiary and quaternary, revolve
Chapter-5 around obtaining and utilising resources
necessary for survival.
Secondary activities add value to natural
resources by transforming raw materials into
valuable products. Cotton in the boll has limited
use but after it is transformed into yarn,
becomes more valuable and can be used for
making clothes. Iron ore, cannot be used;
directly from the mines, but after being
converted into steel it gets its value and can be
used for making many valuable machines,
tools, etc. The same is true of most of the
materials from the farm, forest, mine and the
Secondary Activities sea. Secondary activities, therefore, are
concerned with manufacturing, processing and
construction (infrastructure) industries.

MANUFA
MANUFACTURING
Manufacturing involves a full array of
production from handicrafts to moulding iron
and steel and stamping out plastic toys to
assembling delicate computer components or
space vehicles. In each of these processes, the
common characteristics are the application of
power, mass production of identical products
and specialised labour in factory settings for
the production of standardised commodities.
Manufacturing may be done with modern
power and machinery or it may still be very
primitive. Most of the Third World countries still
‘manufacture’ in the literal sense of the term. It
is difficult to present a full picture of all the
manufacturers in these countries. More
emphasis is given to the kind of ‘industrial’
activity which involves less complicated systems
of production.

Characteristics of Modern Large Scale
Manufacturing
Modern large scale manufacturing has the
following characteristics:

Specialisation of Skills/Methods of
Production
Under the ‘craft’ method factories produce only
a few pieces which are made-to-order. So the
costs are high. On the other hand, mass

36 Fundamentals of Human Geography